Sunshine Barry and the Disco Worms

I don't know why most of the reviews are overhyping this film. The characters aren't really interesting and dull and the plot is really unoriginal and its just a ripoff of Flushed Away and Bee Movie and every second it just starts to become even more worse with stuff like horrible political messages and stereotypes.

Animation is really bad and the characters have weird movements that fell into the uncanny valley and the backgrounds look like plastic (even in 2008 there were films with better animation than this) the character design looks like it had potential but got messed up in a horrible film.

Bjarne is coming of age. His mother is immensely frightened that her little worm will be unable to drop his childhood follies and focus on his new work at a waste processing plant. Unfortunately for her she is right as Bjarne indulges into his new passion: creating a disco band and scooping up a huge prize at the talent competition. This leads him to create Sunshine Barry and the Disco Worms. On bass: his best friend the extremely overweight Jimmy. On guitar: metal-head Niller: On backup vocals: pretty-worm Gloria. On drums: secretary music-extraordinaire Donna.

A mildly entertaining affair, which starts of a bit tedious and uninspiring, but actually manages to hit the funk somewhere towards the end with a couple of nicely sold gags plus surprisingly well-scripted (albeit extremely predictable) plotting. Even though the characters are mostly unsympathetic (save for maybe the characters of Niller and Donna) the movie manages to hit home with the boogie. I really must say that I was taken slightly by surprise, as I was expecting a semi-digested turd, but instead actually found myself enjoying the final third of the movie.

The movie will never get applauds for innovative script or spectacular jokes, while the charm is all over the place, but the essential question is whether the disco fever will channel through your body by the end. In my case I would have to say yes.

School holiday season would dictate more animated and family oriented films being released in the theatres, and while we would rue at having to wait until September for Pixar's Up, we have to make do with the rather lacklustre Monsters vs Aliens with 3D gimmick, and the little unknowns (pardon the pun) like Sunshine Barry and the Disco Worms, set in the insect kingdom with earthworms species being put in the spotlight.

I suppose it's a challenge to animate earthworms. After all, they're tiny, they're slimy, and you just can't tell heads over tails. But no matter, this Danish animation managed to have it all worked out, fusing disco singing and dancing, with an effective, if not tried and tested, formula about turning zeroes into heroes. Released as the dubbed English version here, the animation is easy on the eyes, going for a very clean look with just enough visual details that prevent it from clogging up your senses. Disco lovers will no doubt find themselves tapping to famous tunes of the Disco era, such as Blame it on the Boogie and evergreens from the Village People, amongst others.

But I was rather surprised and pleased at the more mature theme a show for kids had attempted to tackle, and that's on discrimination. It's set very early on in the film that the earthworms are of lower caste in the insect kingdom, getting no respect or love from the larger community, just because they are at the bottom of the foodchain, having no valued skills other than to maintain the compost of their shared habitat. Literally the poop job if you'd like, and having a career none other than to do that for the rest of their lives. One cannot even aspire to be the CEO of their compost company, because it's a position reserved for other insects to manage over them.

So dreamers like the titular Barry, who dreams of being a disco singer/dancer with his own band, have no place in the community for his lack of willingness to conform, unlike best pal Tito, a fat worm looked down upon and being made fun of because of its weight. Barry finds his true calling one day when he gets passed down his dad's old box to help him in his middle-management examinations, and soon finds enough inspiration to turn his dream into reality, even if it means dodging his protective mother's queries, and having absolutely no clue going about doing so, assembling a rag-tag team of worms with raw talent that needs plenty of polishing.

Throw in a romance subplot, and a chief adversary in the form of a ballad crooning beetle who sees them as a rival in their bid to win 10 Grand in a Top of the Pops equivalent contest, and you have a neat film which has great musical tracks and a simple story with a main theme that children can grasp onto. It's a little inspiring as well with the entrenched thought of dreaming big, and working at making one's dreams come true, with what matters being the journey and the experience gained, not everything focused solely on the destination and material goals.

This is the story about friends grounded to the corporation jobs. In their world you cannot be somebody if you do not agree with the corporationism. Work, eat, sleep are only allowed activities. Is it not the same as we have in our world ?. Film required deep understanding and this is not film for young children because they will not able to understand what is going on. This is not film for everybody.

I discovered this movie when I was looking for another movie with a similar concept that I saw a few years ago, and it caught my attention that it is about a worm that likes disco music, a somewhat strange concept, anyway, it made me curious. , then I saw it.

To start, the first thing you notice is that female worms have tits. But I'll talk about that later.. Another thing is the animation, it is not at all good, even for its time. After some research, I realized that this movie only had a budget of 5 million dollars, so that's kind of understandable, plus animating dancing worms must be difficult.

One of the things I liked about the movie is the music, since the music is very good.

The story is not as bad as I thought, it is simple and somewhat cliché, but at least it is entertaining or at least that is what I think.

And its moral, which is that you do not discriminate against others and follow your dreams and goals, or at least that's what I understood.

Something I noticed is that this movie has several things that make no sense, yes I already know that it is an animated movie and not EVERYTHING has to make sense, but there are some details that were inconsistent.

The first thing is that the worms have hair and clothes, I understand that it was for Aser the characters, as you could say... somewhat humanoid, but obtaining fabric for clothes would be very difficult, especially for worms. Now the electricity, yes You saw the movie, you probably noticed that there are televisions, light poles and other things that need electricity, and I repeat the same thing from the previous one, it would be very difficult for worms to have all those functional things, another thing I noticed is that in Barry's house, at minute 20:09 you can see in the windows that they have flowers and some plants, which doesn't make sense why there aren't such, but SO tiny plants, I don't know why, but I feel like the writers forgot that This is not a world where worms and insects rule the world and are the size of humans, I say this because of what was mentioned above and the following, at minute 5:45 a painting of a moose is seen behind Barry's mother , which does not make sense, since since they are worms they should see these types of GIANT animals and also, how do they change it to take a photo? And finally, because this movie has so many inconsistencies that every time it is analyzed it has increasingly less sense, is that one part, more specifically at minute 37:50, shows Dito eating a carrot, as I said, carrots should be tiny enough to be seen like that in front of a worm.

Another thing I didn't like were some decisions made by the animators or other people who worked on the film, like giving an example of what I said at the beginning that female worms HAVE TITS. Let's see, in this movie there are worms, males and females, when really they should be hermaphrodites, the fact that they did it that way makes sense, but this doesn't, I guess they did it that way so that they would be different from the males, but I'm 99% wrong. Sure. Surely only her long hair, her voices and her thinner body were enough for her. Also, that in Barry's dad's glasses, you have his eyes, instead of making them transparent.

Simply questions that will never be answered.

I guess whoever came up with that has... unusual tastes xd.

Now let's move on to some things I didn't like about the movie.

The design of the characters, being worms, are mostly the same, only with some differences, which from my point of view made the environment look a little boring and unlike other insects, the truth is that they would have suited you the characters well. With that budget.

Now, while watching it, I realized that the movie had animation errors, for example: At minute 29:02 the insect in the back acts as if it is shaking a glass when in reality it is not shaking anything.

At minute 54:30 Barry has one suit, but in the next scene he has another one, in fact, why didn't the fisherman question that the worms he was going to use as hooks had clothes, hair and two of these, TITS ? At 57:31 (a mistake that I think is a bit unforgivable) Jimmy's tail crosses the floor At minute 31:57 there are some insects behind, which are white as if their modeling was not well rendered (or at least that's what I want to believe).

Another thing I complain about is that the romance between Barry and Gloria seemed a little forced. Also, the "villain" I feel like I don't really contribute much to the plot Anyway, to finish the movie, the truth is that it is somewhat entertaining, it is not very good, but very little of it is trash, you can enjoy it, although I really wouldn't recommend it at all.

At least it's better than foodfight xd.

Thank you for reading.